At first, as he watched the play unfold on the television screen, Liam Coen was just like any other football fan who has grown enamored with the work of Victor Cruz this season: He heard himself screaming mindlessly, shaking fists at the set.

He saw Eli Manning roll a few yards to his left on third-and-1, 10 minutes into a scoreless do-or-die game with the Cowboys. He saw Manning flick a short pass to Cruz in the flat, maybe 4 yards, a step ahead of Dallas’ Terence Newman, saw Cruz tuck the ball away, as all good possession receivers are supposed to.

Then, Cruz made a quick right, got a block from Mario Manningham, and became a blue blur. Newman looked like he was running backward on an airport people mover in pursuit. So did Gerald Sensabaugh. By the time Cruz passed the goal line both Cowboys were 5 yards behind but close enough to see a salsa dance.

And a few hundred miles away, Liam Coen — presently the quarterbacks coach at the University of Rhode Island, formerly a record-setting quarterback at the University of Massachusetts — found himself grinning, then laughing, then chirping at the TV.

“Hey, Victor!” he said, laughing, “where was that breakaway speed when I could’ve used it?”

Coen and Cruz were roommates at the Kennedy Dormitory at UMass, good friends, and on Saturday afternoons all across New England Cruz used to make Coen’s eyes grow wide as he gradually became the kind of receiver that makes a quarterback look awfully good.

“Great hands, ran incredible routes, and he knew how to read defenses,” Coen said by phone. “No matter what defenses threw at us, here was the one thing that always struck you: Victor always got open. Always.”

That tormented so many of Cruz’s opponents in the Colonial Athletic Association and elsewhere in the Football Championship Subdivision. But it is also a skill — twinned with the fact, as Coen saw first hand, he can run like the wind now, too — that inspires many of his old opponents.

“I remember he caught 11 balls against us when we played him,” said Garrett Heron, who played against Cruz at Hofstra in that program’s final year, and is now a professional fitness instructor who has used Cruz as an inspiration toward staying in the game. “He was a great blocker and had incredible drive, but we kept him out of the end zone that day. I think that was before his salsa dancing days.”

“Actually, that’s a good thing,” said Matt Hansen, who played at Rhode Island and is now a member of the Atlanta Falcons’ practice squad. “Or else he might have danced all day against us. He was a smart player who was more quick than fast in those days and knew how to leverage the man covering him as well as anyone I can remember.”

The players who tried to stop Cruz on Saturdays have taken a distinct pride in seeing him emerge on Sundays.

“You can see he plays like he has something to prove every game,” said Dave Casale, who played free safety at Albany. “A lot of guys from FCS play that way. He was always the guy we talked about in meetings and you could sense he knew how to play. But at that level?”

“Look,” said Dave Nicomini, who played linebacker at Albany, “We played against Miles Austin at Monmouth, and Marques Colston at Hofstra, so when those guys make Super Bowls and Pro Bowls, and when you see what Victor’s done, you feel great. This isn’t Iowa or Nebraska.

“But a big-play guy is a big-play guy. I remember against us, there was a third-and-28, a give-up play, and yet he makes a play on our safety, gets a first down. Does that sound familiar?”

Said Drew Christ, who coaches DBs at Albany: “What you see out of the kid now? We knew that too well.”

So did his old quarterback.

“Vic made Victor into Vic,” Coen said. “He made himself.”

Coen soon found himself remembering a play against James Madison a few years ago, a simple slant pattern and suddenly Cruz was gone, racing 50, 60 yards down field …

“And he gets caught at the 5 from behind,” he said, laughing. “Eli gets the version of Victor that outruns Terence Newman. Go figure.”